Let's look at the base personnel groupings or base offensive alignment of most of the leagues 32 teams and see if we can see some trends. Also we will look at the the way the defense has to change because of this trend. Keep in mind, one of the goals of an offense is to observe the base defenses of the other teams and then try to get match up advantages.

A few years ago teams decided to attack the base defense that had a standard front seven of either four down linemen and three linebackers or three down linemen and four linebackers by trotting out three wide receivers, they automatically had a mismatch with one of the linebackers. But initially teams only went to this three wide receivers formation on second and/or third down and when they did the defense would counter with their nickel package.

Well, now teams will have the 11 package as their base offensive alignment, so the defense must counter with the nickel as their base alignment defense.

This means that teams now need to look at how to distribute the different groups of the 53-man roster a little differently. With this in mind, we should take a moment and decide which of the defensive groups we should be most worried about because of this trend. But first let's look at the data to see if the move to three wide receivers is really the new base alignment for most teams.

BASE PACKAGE

In today's NFL the base offensive formation has evolved into the 11 package. One running back, one tight end and three wide receivers. In fact, 29 of the 32 NFL teams used the 11 personnel package as their main alignment.

"Use of 11 personnel skyrocketed over the past couple seasons, and one reason it has skyrocketed is that it works."

"Right now, the most efficient way to play offense in the NFL is to put three wide receivers, one running back, and one tight end on the field with your quarterback in shotgun for a majority of snaps. Not all of them, you have to switch it up of course, but most of them." - - -

Based upon the last quote above the author seems to be saying that instead of the 11 package, it should be called the s11 package since he seem to infer that most of those were in the shotgun formation. (Just what I wanted to hear/see.)

Before I go further, let me reintroduce the "Package" chart, (with one minor addition), that has been shown more than once on BTB including once by me in my Football 101 series titled "Air Garrett - Part 2" article...

The best offense in the league, Denver, used the 11 package over 70% of the time and the Ravens used it 75% of the time...